The present invention relates generally to tools and more particularly to tools designed principally for use in gardening.
Individuals that engage in landscaping often require a large variety of different gardening tools to perform standard tasks. Examples of well known and widely used gardening tools include, but are not limited to, rakes, aerators, edgers and hoes. As can be appreciated, the requirement that a landscaper possess a large number of individual gardening tools introduces significant issues with respect to storage, handling and cost, which is highly undesirable.
Consequently, multi-purpose garden tools are well known in the art. Multi-purpose garden tools commonly include a plurality of task-specific gardening heads that are coupled to a common elongated handle. By adjusting the relative position of one or more of the heads, the tool can be configured into a plurality of distinct gardening instruments (e.g., rakes, aerators, edgers and hoes). In this manner, the single multi-purpose tool described in detail above can be used to perform a plurality of different gardening tasks, thereby resolving some of the storage, handling and cost-related issues that are typically associated with the traditional method of utilizing a large number of separate gardening instruments.
In U.S. Pat. No. 6,694,717 to T. Derick, which is incorporated herein by reference, there is disclosed one example of a multi-purpose garden tool. Specifically, the garden tool includes an elongated handle having a tubular sheath connected to its bottom end. A push hoe blade has a shank that is connected to the bottom end of the tubular sheath. The push hoe blade has a foot flange formed along its top edge to provide a platform against which the garden tool's user can push his foot when using the garden tool as a shovel, a push hoe or an edger. The rake head has its top end pivotally connected to the handle adjacent its bottom end. A rake head can be rotated from a stored position to a working position. There is structure for locking the rake head in both the stored position and the operating position.
In U.S. Pat. No. 5,609,215 to G. C. Rios et al., which is incorporated herein by reference, there is disclosed a combination hoe and pivoting rake tool including a handle. A hoe portion is dimensioned for coupling with an end of the handle. A central rake portion is secured to the hoe portion. The central rake portion has a plurality of teeth extending outwardly therefrom perpendicular to the hoe portion. A pair of outer rake portions each have a plurality of teeth extending downwardly therefrom. Each of the outer rake portions are pivotally coupled with one of opposing ends of the central rake portion. A pivoting mechanism is secured to a lower end portion of the handle and pivotally coupled with the pair of outer rake portions.
Multi-purpose garden tools of the type described in detail above have been found to suffer from a few notable shortcomings.
As a first shortcoming, multi-purpose garden tools of the type described above typically rely upon relatively complex mechanical means to transform the tool into each of its intended gardening instruments. As a result, these types of multi-purpose gardening tools have been found to be both expensive to manufacture and difficult to operate, which is highly undesirable.
As a second shortcoming, multi-purpose garden tools of the type described above typically allow for transformation between no more than two gardening instruments. However, it has been found that many landscaping professionals routinely require several different gardening tools during the course of a particular project. Accordingly, a multi-purpose gardening tool that is only capable of transformation between a pair of gardening instruments often fails to adequately meet the needs of the user when conducting standard landscaping tasks, which is highly undesirable.